Race to Terra (Book 10 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  Race to Terra

  Book Ten of The Empire of Bones Saga

  Terry Mixon

  Contents

  Race to Terra

  Also by Terry Mixon

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Also by Terry Mixon

  About Terry

  Race to Terra

  Book Ten of The Empire of Bones Saga

  by

  Terry Mixon

  Separated by an almost unimaginable gulf in space, Princess Kelsey Bandar and Admiral Jared Mertz must fight to stop the diabolical artificial intelligences that destroyed the Old Terran Empire.

  Though unable to communicate with one another, they must overcome terrible odds and defeat foes determined to kill or enslave them. They cannot allow themselves to fail.

  Yet time is running out. Unless both quickly make their way to Terra, the computers win and humanity loses.

  Race to Terra

  Copyright © 2019 by Terry Mixon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and/or retrieval systems, or dissemination of any electronic version, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review, and except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Yowling Cat Press ®

  Digital edition date: 11/7/2019

  Print ISBN: 978-1947376144

  Large Print ISBN: 978-1947376243

  Cover art - image copyrights as follows:

  DepositPhotos/innovari (Luca Oleastri)

  DepositPhotos/nj_musik (Nazar Yosyfiv)

  DepositPhotos/Taden1 (Denis Tabler)

  DepositPhotos/docer2000 (Mikhail Ulyannikov)

  Luca Oleastri

  Donna Mixon

  Cover design and composition by Donna Mixon

  Print edition design and layout by Terry Mixon

  Audio edition performed and produced by Veronica Giguere

  Reach her at: v@voicesbyveronica.com

  Also by Terry Mixon

  You can always find the most up to date listing of Terry’s titles on his Amazon Author Page.

  The Empire of Bones Saga

  Empire of Bones

  Veil of Shadows

  Command Decisions

  Ghosts of Empire

  Paying the Price

  Reconnaissance in Force

  Behind Enemy Lines

  The Terra Gambit

  Hidden Enemies

  Race to Terra

  Ruined Terra

  The Empire of Bones Saga Volume 1

  The Empire of Bones Saga Volume 2

  The Humanity Unlimited Saga

  Liberty Station

  Freedom Express

  Tree of Liberty

  Blood of Patriots

  The Fractured Republic Saga

  Storm Divers

  The Scorched Earth Saga

  Scorched Earth

  The Vigilante Series with Glynn Stewart

  Heart of Vengeance

  Oath of Vengeance

  Bound By Law

  Bound By Honor

  Bound By Blood

  Want to get updates from Terry about new books and other general nonsense going on in his life? He promises there will be cats. Go to TerryMixon.com/Mailing-List and sign up.

  Dedication

  This book would not be possible without the love and support of my beautiful wife. Donna, I love you more than life itself.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank the folks that support me on Patreon. You got to read this book as I was writing it and that kept me working. You have my deepest thanks.

  In particular, I want to thank those patrons that supported me at the $10 level and above:

  Bryan Barnes

  Tracy Bodine

  John Kilgallon

  Lisa Slack

  Dale Thompson

  Next, I want to thank my Alpha Reader, Tom Stoecklein, for his comments on the manuscript. His insight always helps me see things more clearly.

  Finally, I want to thank my readers for putting up with me. You guys are great.

  1

  Jared Mertz watched Lieutenant Commander Anthony O’Halloran drill a small hole into the crate with a sense of dread. Justified concern about what they were doing made his harsh breathing echo inside his suit helmet, and the stench of his own sweat burned his nose.

  He had no idea how the marines handled working and fighting in suits even more constricted than his. Princess Kelsey, especially. How did she stand it?

  The large crate was one of six secured in Athena’s hold, each filled with a tenacious, horrifying bioweapon of incredible lethality the Rebel Empire called the Omega Plague. All the crates were protected by plasma-based self-destruct charges, which he had no codes to disarm.

  He did have the codes to open the crates, picked up when their unwelcome guest had opened them to load the bioweapon, but he couldn’t be sure the crates wouldn’t send a signal to the man. He couldn’t take that chance, so they were doing this the old-fashioned way.

  If their attempt at examining the charges drew a negative response, all the crates would likely detonate. They’d determined there was more than enough explosive potential here to take out the fusion plant in engineering. That would kill them all quite effectively.

  “How certain are you that the charges won’t detect your intrusion, Tony?” Jared asked through his short-range com. They had to make sure that no one else on the ship detected them. Their new Rebel Empire guests wouldn’t be very happy with what they were doing, so it was best to keep them in the dark.

  They were sleeping at the moment, so Jared was relatively confident of carrying this off. Unless they killed everyone in the process.

  “Pretty sure,” O’Halloran said. “Of course, if I’m wrong, you won’t have much time to yell at me. As in we’ll never know that I tripped a failsafe.”

  The engineer pulled the drill bit back out from the hole he’d just created and slowly inserted a fiber camera. “I can see the charge Princess Kelsey mentioned on this wall of the container. There are three more in plain view, and probably some I can’t see. I wish Katheryn was here. She had a much steadier hand than me.”

  Commander Katheryn Pence had been Athena’s chief engineer before they’d had to subdue the party of Rebel Empire nobles sent to co
mmandeer the supposedly robot-controlled destroyer at El Capitan. She and nine others had died in the fighting when his crew had retaken the ship.

  They’d captured a fair number of the enemy but had lost all but one of them when their leader set off secret bombs planted in every one of her people’s skulls, including her own.

  Only the fact that Olivia West had been questioning one of the prisoners on the other side of the ship had saved that last one. The fact that Jared had locked the com system down had prevented the woman from using it to be sure she got all of her people and had stopped her from setting off the self-destruct charges on the cargo, he suspected.

  “I wish she were here, too,” Jared said tiredly. “You’ll just have to do the best you can, Tony. I have confidence in you.”

  “At least one of us does,” the engineer muttered as he focused on the task at hand. “I’m pretty sure this charge has an antitampering circuit, just like I suspected it would. At least that’s what I think I’m looking at.”

  Jared linked his implants into the low-powered feed and examined what the man was examining. The charge itself was fairly bulky when compared to the plasma grenades the marines favored. It looked like a permanent part of the crate, too.

  “What is the antitampering part?” he asked.

  “See how there are several bands around the device? Those cover the access ports I’d need to use to get into the casing holding the detonator. It’s a safe bet they are rigged to notice if someone is messing with the device unless the appropriate code is entered first.”

  “I suppose that was unavoidable,” Jared said with a sigh. “We weren’t going to get that lucky. What would happen if you cut the case open?”

  “I think Major Scala might be a better person to answer that question. He’s at least taken the ordinance disposal course.”

  Jared half turned and gestured Athena’s senior marine officer over from the hatch he was standing with his men. “Adrian, could you tell us what you think about this bomb? Any chance you could defuse it?”

  The marine came to stand beside them, not speaking for a few moments as he reviewed his own implant feed.

  “That’s a disaster waiting to happen, sir,” the marine officer finally said. “The charge is wrapped up tight. If we screw with it, boom!”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Jared grumbled. “There’s no way to get a probe into the case and deactivate it?”

  “I wouldn’t chance it. This technology is too good to miss the intrusion. If it thinks you’re screwing with it, it’ll go off and take its friends with it. Even jamming the signals wouldn’t help. The other charges are probably using encrypted signals to one another to make sure that nothing like that happens.

  “If they stop getting updates, they’ll be programed to suspect enemy action,” the marine concluded. “Hell, they might be rigged to detect a detonation and go off before the plasma wave front can destroy them.”

  So much for that idea. They’d have to do this the hard way.

  “Seal the crate up, and let’s make sure it doesn’t look tampered with,” Jared ordered. “We’ll have to maintain the masquerade for a while longer. We’re almost two weeks out from Terra. Fielding only extended the timer for a week, so he has plans before we get there. We’ll just have to deal with him as best we can.”

  “Any idea what he has in mind?” Scala asked. “I’d like nothing better than to stun the bastard and put him in chains.”

  “Sadly, that’s probably not going to happen. At least not without us knowing a lot more than we do right now.”

  He gestured for the marine to accompany him back to the hatch leading out of the cargo bay. “We have his nephew on our side—at least I think we do—and he might be able to get more out of the man than we’ve been able to.”

  Austin Darrah had been the only survivor of the Rebel Empire leader’s treachery and knew the AIs would cheerfully kill him if they discovered he was alive, so Jared believed he’d help them, though he was loath to take things at face value on so short an acquaintance.

  Since the young tech wizard was also Oscar Fielding’s nephew, the old man probably had something in mind to extract him from the AI’s mad plan to exterminate all human life on Terra. Jared just didn’t know what it was.

  He wanted to rub his face in frustration, but that would have to wait until he was out of his suit. Then he could return to his cabin and take a much-needed shower.

  Fielding had kicked him out of his original cabin, so he’d had to bump everyone else because that was how the Rebel Empire worked. Appearances and status carried real weight, so he’d had to make a show of evicting his subordinates.

  Still, Jared didn’t have it as bad as his wife. Elise Orison, the crown princess of Pentagar, was sleeping in a maintenance tube and not at all pleased with her current accommodations.

  To their mutual displeasure, she couldn’t risk creeping into his bed at night for fear someone on the opposing team would see her.

  “Wrap it up, people,” he said. “Fielding will be up and looking for his breakfast in a few hours. Get some sleep. You’ve earned it.”

  He’d have just enough time to clean up and get to the officers’ mess. Austin Darrah and Olivia West would be waiting for him, as would Princess Kelsey Bandar.

  Rather, the version of her from another reality. That was one more complication added to an already convoluted situation.

  Well, their difficulties wouldn’t get any easier if he didn’t work on them. At least he was mostly certain that his sister from another universe wouldn’t stick a knife in his back at the first opportunity. She wanted something she couldn’t get without him.

  Still, it might be best to keep her out of the kitchen. There were a lot of sharp instruments in there.

  As he let himself out of the cargo hold, he wondered how his real sister was doing. They hadn’t had any contact after Kelsey had daringly stolen the Dresden orbital, with all its advanced research technology intact and entire.

  He hoped she’d found another way home to the New Terran Empire and was even now meeting with her father, safe and sound. One of them deserved some breaks.

  Princess Kelsey Bandar hunched over her desk aboard the Marine Raider strike ship Persephone and clutched her head in her hands. How the hell was she going to get her people out of this system and back home again?

  They couldn’t go through the multi-flip point back the way they’d come. Their FTL probes in the Icebox system still showed the Clan warships scouring everything, looking for the people who’d destroyed their battle station on the other side of what Carl Owlet had started calling a far flip point because it was unusually distant from the sun.

  Maddeningly, it hadn’t even been Kelsey’s people that had stirred them up, but they’d sure as hell catch the blame if the fragment of the Old Empire calling itself the Clans found them.

  Commander Raul Castille—the Rebel Empire security officer they’d captured aboard the Dresden orbital—had made certain to drop the name of the New Terran Empire before he’d obliterated the battle station he’d discovered on the other side of the far flip point.

  Those damned far flip points had never even been predicted by theory, or so Carl had said, so Kelsey had never even considered having her probes look way out there for a flip point. At least the bastard’s destruction of the Clan battle station had bought them enough time to set up a defense when the first Clan warships came into the Icebox system with blood in their eyes.

  She’d tried to talk them down, but they’d come in shooting, so she’d punched their lights out. That garnered her thirteen prisoners: twelve from the Clans and one from a different political entity called the Singularity.

  Once she’d had her people scour the wreckage for survivors, they’d fled back through the multi-flip point just before the follow-up wave of Clan warships arrived in the Icebox system.

  Since there were no other exits from the system, it would only be so long until the Clans started trying to send sh
ips through the multi-flip point. There was nowhere else the people that had attacked them could have come from or retreated to, after all.

  The Clans didn’t have the technology that Carl had put together on the fly to allow Audacious and the freighter with them to get through the multi-flip point, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get help from the Singularity to do so. Kelsey couldn’t rule it out, so she had to consider it only a matter of time before the Clans made the attempt.

  Without frequency modulators on the flip drive, a ship might or might not be able to get through one. It turned out that of her ships, only Persephone could make it through the one in the Icebox system without a modulator.

  Marine Raider strike ships were the smallest class of flip-capable vessel Kelsey had ever heard of, so the odds of the Clans having something capable of making the trip were small indeed.

  The multi-flip points behaved oddly when a ship without a modulator tried to use them. While they had a number of potential destinations, ships without modulators went to a kind of default branch of the wormhole.

  In the case of the Icebox multi-flip point, the default was back into the Rebel Empire, to an empty system near Dresden. Thankfully, that was not where Kelsey and her people had fled, so that provided them some additional breathing space.